The perks of last—as in previous—generation consoles

When this year started I shared some ongoing self-improvement plans and, although posts on science or language have been published, there’s not much on the third group, apart from books. Let’s talk about video games.

PlayStation 4 is turning 1 next Saturday and I bought a PlayStation 3 a couple of weeks ago. So, PS4 exists and I’m buying PS3? Exactly. I’m never really up to date with consoles. In fact, Nintendo DS and PSP are my current portable consoles, even though Nintendo 3DS and PS Vita were released a while ago. Even some PS2 games are still waiting for me on the shelf…

Being a generation behind has some perks. To start with, prices have gone down and there’s a nice second-hand market because the rest of the world is replacing the old machine and games with the new ones. Additionally, the real potential of the consoles has been revealed —or neglected— and there’s the full range of games to choose from. You also learn to take life easy; there is neither pressure from new games nor shortage of them.

It won’t strike you as a surprise —after the 100 pages of my comic— that I’m playing Final Fantasy XIII. Gamer opinions apart, let me talk about its subtitles. If you understand both the voices (in English) and the text (in Spanish), don’t you get confused? The translation is quite free, which is not necessarily bad because without the voices it would work perfectly. However, I try to keep up with both and I listen to a conversation and read another one that moves the same way, but in a different fashion. Apparently, being a generation behind has no benefit against occupational psychosis.